Ten Thousand Things
Multicultural Webfinds

"Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.

Nara National Museum: "The 59th Annual Exhibition of Shosoin Treasures" – Oct. 27 to Nov. 12

Maple leaves are turning crimson in Japan's ancient capital, Nara, and it's time for the short two-week window when the Nara National Museum opens "The 59th Annual Exhibition of Shosoin Treasures."

Nara's founders, the Fujiwaras, modeled their new capital after the T'ang era (619-907) capital Ch'ang-an (now Xian), then the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Despite distance and the slow method of travel, elites in Nara and Ch'ang-an stayed in relatively close contact, and both cities still reflect the multiculturalism of the Silk Road culture of their time.

Arguably the world's oldest museum, the Shosoin Treasure House, Nara-era repository is located in a tranquil spot just north of Todaiji’s Great Buddha Hall, and began its existence as part of Todaiji temple, founded by Emperor Shomu. After his death on May 2, 756, at the end of the first forty-nine days of official mourning, prescribed by Buddhist law, his wife, Empress Komyo donated his belongings, including many items used during Great Buddha's eye-opening ceremony (including the giant paintbrush that the Indian monk Bodhisena used to "open" the original Buddha's eyes in 752) to the temple.

Komyo, a Fujiwara similarly to Shomu’s mother, and born in the same year as the emperor, was the first commoner chosen as imperial consort. The couple rarely parted company and Shomu proclaimed that his wife would help during his rule, “My consort shall have affairs to govern.” They appeared to adore each other and Komyo's lament reflects the crushing grief that compelled her donation:

"Alas! Who could have anticipated the dark river of death that separates this world from the next? To our great sorrow, there could be no prolongation of his august life on earth, and the trees have shed their leaves. Time flows on, and nine and forty days have now elapsed; I was unaware of the passage of time, since my griefwas growing ever deeper and my sadness even heavier.

"Opening the earth will reveal no sign; and to appeal to heaven brings me no solace. So I desire to give succor to his august spirit by the performance of this good deed, and therefore, for the sake of the late emperor, these various articles which he handled – girdles, ivory scepters, bows and errows, collection of calligraphy, musical instruments, and the rest, which are in truth rare national treasures – I donate to the Todaiji as a votive offering to the Vairocana Buddha, various other buddhas, bodhisattvas, and all the saints."

The heartbroken dowager empress’ legacy to Todaiji included Roman glass, a Byzantine cup, an Egyptian chest, an Afghan mace, Indian and Persian styled harps, Persian brocade, Chinese felt rugs modeled on Central and North Asian carpets, over seventy musical instruments – including a koto (shiragi-goto) from the Korean kingdom of Silla – Go and other gameboards, engraved saddles and other military equipment, Buddhist regalia, and calligraphy by Komyo and Shomu.

High-ranking priests sealed the Shosoin with ecclesiastical stamps, and Emperor Shomu’s treasures stayed secreted for centuries until the Meiji government seized the collection from Todaiji, placing the items under the control of various ministries, most recently to the Ministry of the Imperial Household. After the Second World War, the holdings became national property under the control of the same government-run ministry, which selects some items each year, on a rotational basis, to be exhibited at the Nara National Museum, for the viewing of anyone who comes to Nara during the two-week exhibition.


Visitors waiting in line at Nara National Museum to see the treasures, Sunday Oct. 28

The Shosoin's collection of over nine thousand objects naturally reflects the borderless cultures that made up the Silk Roads, which borrowed from each other in multiple directions, creating an ancient intercultural discourse and exchange that reflects not only the travel of goods, but also of faith traditions, music, art, folk stories, and theatrical plots, along the Silk Roads, between Africa, Rome, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, China, the kingdoms of the Korean peninsula and nascent imperial Japan. The Shosoin collection – not just a "Japanese," but a world heritage collection – breathtakingly makes visible for us these threads of interpenetration in the arts, religion and other cultural forms, that reached the point of fusion in many instances throughout the Silk Roads, reminding us of the commonalities of our shared world heritage.

Silk Road scholar Eiji Hattori, author of Letters from the Silk Roads: Thinking at the Crossroads of Civilization, who wrote that "Civilizations never clash. Ignorance does clash," shared an insightful "a-ha" moment in his erudite and lyrical book: in a moment of awe when he saw how a Buddhist sculpture in Sri Lanka especially mirrored one in Japan's Horyuji temple, he realized: "It is said that the world has become smaller, but wasn’t it already small in the remote ages of antiquity?”

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